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 Mailing address: bo@bo-hemian.com |
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2 August 1998 -- Stopping to consider my obligations
I drive back up the rough road, acquiring more dirt and tree branch abrasion on what was once a shiny new truck, and pull into the solitary surroundings of the front dooryard area, with the clearing off to the left and the tree-choked ravine to the right. Some of the heat has dissipated in recent days, so it's a little easier to do things outside, such as filling the water cistern from the river, carrying those full buckets up that long, stone-step path to the back door.
It has been another day of involvement down there, with too many intricacies and interlocking processes to coordinate. It all seems like some big machine-algorithm, with a lot of processing threads, where certain threads must wait upon the output of others before they can resume. I still try to figure out why I've let that real life get so out of hand. It cannot simply be that the external world has stepped up its complexity and that I had no part in complying with it. I turn off the engine, knowing that for this time being, I've removed myself from that morass. I also know full well that it's waiting for me when I get back.
It is such a difficult thing sometimes, not to jump with compulsion at some newly-apparent task in city living, and instead saying "hold everything!", when it becomes clear that something more basic and essential should take precedence. Maybe this compulsion is where the complexity comes from. Maybe I should be waiting on new propositions longer, evaluating them more completely, before adding them to the load. That is what I like about time at the Cabin, where so many fewer of these spur-of-the-moment, impulsive undertakings confront, tempt, and ultimately entrap me.
Back in the "days of greater relaxation", before we all got bombarded with exponentially-growing connectivity, concurrent messages, and multiple opportunities to launch into unforseen tangents of occupation, it was possible to stay limited and devote considerable attention to a very select set of affairs. Perhaps this life still exists in isolated rural hamlets such as that last town below, before my road turns off the main highway. But even they have satellite dishes and internet service now. So, then, the initiative to avoid being swept away by it all must ultimately rest in those choices about what to let in and what to exclude, a fundamental form of discernment I've tried to develop for the last year.
Closing the door of the truck, I walk out into the area of the clearing in front of the porch, near the fire ring. Yes, I'll build a campfire tonight. It's time for that form of singular concentration I've come to know, both in real-life camping and up here where the heat is a bit more appreciated. I've noticed what a centering exercise it is, to sit by a campfire and tend it until it is only embers. "No, I won't jump up to go do that. Can't you see? I have this fire." I head over to open the plank-panel door of the woodshed, with its rusting steel latch, and crawl about in the dark recesses to find some choice pieces of hardwood from last season. Time to get a new supply soon for this year, I remind myself. I build the wood-pile, out by the stone ring, that I know will create enough burn time to think a few things over properly, when nightfall comes and I've had some chow.
I stand for a moment and look up at the spread of the folded hillsides, rising to the ridge-summits. I have the time, I say to myself, to take this scene for all it's worth. It is its own, and does not contain a bundle of pointers, urging me to new considerations. Yes, it was time to halt the processes and think over just what I've bitten off to chew and why.
RB
6 August 1998 -- Waiting on my reward
Summer continues unabated, with that strong sun providing the convincing illusion that it is here for all time. I've come out to the edge of the clearing to sit against one of the notable oaks, within its zone of shade whose border and perforations vary slightly as the breeze picks up and subsides. August, the home stretch of summer, is under way. The kids in the towns below all know this, as they watch their parents provide for another year of compulsory education at the "back to school" sales. It has been so many years since I have known a real summer vacation--the last was in 1985, about the time I joined the IEEE and learned to be a "professional". The feel of such an extended getaway is rapidly leaving my repertoire of experience. Yet, as these writings show, I yearn continually for such escape, as do so many in my real life city surroundings.
As I sit here doing nothing more than looking across the clearing, through the grass and boulders, to the top of the Cabin in the distance and the rise on the other side of the ravine, it occurs to me how selfish it really is to run away. I know of the occupation and vocation I have in that routine, and I fulfill the letter of my social contract when I carry out those deeds. Never mind that I feel desperate, say the great minds (e.g., Dr. Laura et al.). I do not count, and in any event, I am supposed to know some indirect yet fully-caused reward, somewhere down the line, if I keep giving of myself. But, I also recall that the Lord loves a cheerful giver. A forced performance in my role, like the work of a kid who hates going to school, must appear far from optimal.
I regard myself as fortunate that my work is such that I need not be of good cheer to be supported for a living nonetheless. The world would seek my presence in any state of mind, rather than have me pick up and go, leaving so many in the lurch. So, I stay; I keep signing the sign-in sheet. Days blend into weeks, weeks into months, months into years. But where is the reward? Am I supposed to be seeking the reward, anyway? Does my grudgingly-supplied compliance provide credit towards the reward at all?
I begin to think that the path of least resistance and greatest economic gain that has carried me for 13 years was really just a trap, one I would escape except for being so tired that I accept it in procrastination and apathy. Yet, it has been so long since I've had any appreciable period of inactivity. I'm not sure how I would handle it. Even laid up on sick leave for 2 or 3 days, all I can think of is "I'm behind; I need to get back!".
That human social machine down there has become accustomed to my particular point of assembly within it, and the lights begin to flash in operator control rooms when I fail to respond as expected. I suppose I have "Industrial Disease", as Dire Straits termed it in that forgotten classic of 1982. But this is clearly an affliction I suffer for noble cause, as I place my particular lamp upon its stand. I let my head fall back against the rough bark of the tree, closing my eyes and listening to the insects, the rustle of the leaves, and the far-off sound of the stream. Maybe I already have the reward, sitting in its crate, unopened. Maybe I'm happy but I don't know it. That's all I can pray for.
RB
10 August 1998 -- Avoiding the confrontations
It is a warm day, with general cloud cover, yet the sun occasionally peers out. It might end up raining later, from the looks of it. I'm glad to have had the roofer out over the weekend to repair that leak over the kitchen and give the entire surface a going-over for what I might have missed on my own scramble up there. It was so strange, having a visitor, but since this was purely business, I did not have to engage much in society or social intrigue on his account. I was actually glad to see him, though, for he told me where I could buy several cords of firewood for the winter at a good price. As I have said, I am not so bold or resourceful as to live off the land or to wield a hatchet for all things, in the manner of Thoreau.
I'm out on the front porch, feet hanging out over the edge, looking at the dustiness of the dooryard and the rough perimeter of scattered grass and rocks. In there, I see a fair assortment of wildflowers, the kind derisively called "ragweed" in the city, if I am not mistaken. These bring to mind the Sermon on the Mount's lilies of the field, a finer garment to clothe the grass than King Solomon's best trappings of glory. The clouds have taken on a grayer overall tone, as their sculpted undersides are drawn steadily across the hollow. I feel just now as I have felt before in these outdoors; that I am sitting inside an enormous enclosed space, an effect especially enhanced by the cloud cover. The artificial space inside the Cabin looks so small in comparison.
I spend some time today, at rest with the inherent non-contention of the woods and the hills and the river. I think to the contrast of the city, with people ever in my face, behind me, and in my way. I walk the best, hurried path I can through their massings, trying to see my way clear to the next arbitrary goal in my staid routine. I begin to wonder how I ever came to see society as all competition, anyway. The ones I call "normal" must not be of such an orientation. They appear to seek first cooperation and understanding, turning to confrontation only as a last resort, in the name of necessary, limited business goals. They seek first the kingdom of God, and the other things follow. That is such a simple prescription, except for those whose eyes can barely perceive the majesty of that kingdom in all things.
So I'm out here in the wild, where there's no denying creation's own beauty, and where hastily-conceived human discourse is not presented for my slanted misreading. I fix my eyes upon the trees in the distance, whose branches begin to sway a bit more intensely, as the sky builds. Yes, rain is coming. This setting absorbs my attention, and I place aside those petty urban woes, so temporary and tragically unnecessary, save for my state of detachment from the crowds. Those casual encounters must all seem so cold to those who cross my path, and I grow tired of stepping out of the way.
The rain finally arrives, in wind-driven sheets, and I step into the living room, which looks so dark to unadjusted eyes. I rapidly close all of the windows. The roof is holding, I see, after several minutes' observation. Yes, one day; one bright and glorious day, I shall know the Way in my heart and live as "they" do. The world will demonstrate astounding patience if it can wait that long. I do not take to the one-size-fits-all platitudes for personal growth. Be gone, O Gurus! I would not be hiding here today if I could.
RB
14 August 1998 -- Another retreat to the summit
I decide to seek out a cooler place today, because of the sun and the heat. The waterfall, with its coursing spray, is most convenient for this purpose, since it is only a short distance up the trail from the Cabin, but it feels so enclosed under all that cover sometimes. So I have loaded my daypack, filled my canteen and taken the now-familar, rocky trail to the high summit on the ridge. The wind always greets me when I enter into its full exposure here, and the heat of my climb radiates off into the open air to be swept outward and away.
The peak is an enormous granite outcropping, with places here and there to sit. I must constantly change my position because of the hard surface acting at such random angles on my legs and back. I am glad to have brought my seating-pad this time, so that my mind can go to matters other than the need to get up again. I spend awhile at first, gazing off into the less familiar topography of the adjoining valley. I really don't know much about that area. Go far enough, and I suppose one would encounter another dwelling, maybe one of those ones with the satellite dish, dishwasher, and hot tub. A victory for rural electrification. But I can't see anything from here--just more rolling ridge-crests. It doesn't really matter, anyway.
I turn back and look into "my" hollow again, down the long slope to the clearing and the Cabin. Yes, it is cooler up here! I am picturing the sweltering stillness in that area by the front door, where the truck is parked. I realize that the same sun shines on me here, but under a different set of atmospheric conditions. It is the same sun, yes, that even shines on me back in the city, in real life, amid the throng, where I avoid it with A/C. It is always an easy, cheap-and-dirty solution, to make a run for a hiding place when faced with something so unavoidably present, like the solar rays.
Life gives me many hard-truth trials resembling the heat of the summer sun, and though they tempt me to give up, I cannot see them being dishonorable by their mere onset, for such is life. Sometimes, though, surrender and orderly retreat in those situations is the doctrinally correct course of action. It becomes vanity to continue thinking I have courage to change the truly unchangeable. I only await the wisdom to know that it must be accepted as such.
Oh, what a day, what a place, on the summit right now! Even if it was a form of running off from other useful things I may have accomplished down by the Cabin, I wonder how much of that work I'd really get to, with the heat as it was. Each setting has an optimal set of options, and each state of personal strength has its own list of what can get done. I therefore try not to see it as failure, when I must step back and out of the game. It cannot be all my fault.
I am amazed by the boundless power of will that is credited to me by the well-intentioned proponents of self-reliance and -accountability; by those who have seen their share of self-serving pseudo-"victims" and think I'm just another something-for-nothing "whiner". I would take the heat down there, yes, and I would even abandon the hollow and return to the city full time, for I know the opportunities I have there. But not right now. I'm going to stretch out on my back, on this rock, for I am tired. Something will make me return to lower ground soon. It always does.
RB
18 August 1998 -- Trying to let go
The sun has passed through its high noon position, leaving the day to its long, second, waning half. Being outdoors as much as I am here, I can better understand the rationale for the siesta, Mittagspause, or equivalent, as found in more traditional cultures. I have found a spot, in the growing shade of a rock in the clearing, with enough ground cover to make for a soft resting place. I have so little capability or opportunity to rest like this in my real life, although my complaint is hardly the lack of time itself. Rather, the routine of my daily and weekly schedule keeps my mind from releasing its host of insignificant worries.
I am unable to settle into living in the present moment. For every minute and every hour, pre-ordained duty goes undone when I try to step back and relax. I have an insatiable need to impose an orderly structure upon my time, a structure that is not always the most accomodating for moments when I feel worn. The structure ignores pleas for leniency and mercy. Its mechanism grinds along. So here I am today, perched in the hills, with time that is devoid of such structure. There is only the motion of the sun and the change of the seasons. I soon begin to crave the reassuring return of that missing protocol of activity. Although it is a rut, its outcome is always certain; I know survival and renewal will come at the end of the regularly-appearing trials.
I wonder, as I remain stretched out in the grass, about those who have the courage to face the unknown. They do not fear new settings and challenges as much as the drudgery of the old ones. But then I sigh, knowingly. There I go again, comparing myself to others, as I try to deal with my preference for stable surroundings, even if my expectations remain limited. I keep thinking of the many who bear witness to the greenness of my grass, which I have time and patience to tend, since I do not leave it for long. I try my best to see myself through their eyes; eyes that may have seen untold sorrow from their own, failed, good-faith ventures. They see a man with matters "under control"; an objectively favorable situation, one low on chaos content. These same might have marvelled at Mussolini's on-time trains.
But they do not see all the way inside; they do not know that the "control" is achieved by maintaining a high-stress balance of forces, any one of which, on its own, could easily sweep me away. My path through life might actually be easier on me, if I could back down on some of those forces, but that would require the most careful of coordination. I wonder, as I feel the warm breeze upon me, what letting go completely would be like. "Let go and Let God", I am frequently told by the inspirational literature. How scant, therefore, is my faith!
I see the ones who might show envy, here or there, for some small component of my life, while I envy the greater part of who and what they are. My fly-by-wire real life is a dangerous one. While I am occupied by this aviation metaphor, I look overhead and spot a hawk, high above, gliding with so little effort yet remaining at altitude, even when executing turns. Such a creature has to trust in its native ability to carry itself along on its flight path. Let go... Fighting against irritation makes it all the more irritating. It is the rare moment, when I am at all content to let things be.
RB
22 August 1998 -- The problems with running away
Another morning comes upon me, as the bright orange-yellow sunlight entering the living room window serves as my natural indication that I've slept long enough. As I lay in my bed in the alcove, the new surroundings of the breaking daylight cause me to enter into the distinct morning-mood. Some basic parts of life down the hill in the city are inescapable. The interior has already lost much of its evening chill, against which I make good use of my down comforter. The extremes of night and day are so much more pronounced without climate control or electrical lighting.
I stumble about, barefooted, on the wood-plank floor after deciding, finally, that I must be up and under way. I head to the kitchen to work on coffee, another component of my real life I find hard to leave behind. As I take my cup to the sofa and prop myself into position for looking out the window into the clearing, I sadly realize how difficult it would be to come to an actual place like this for any extended period. The support network of services and acquaintances I have in the city has me as dependent as a NASA astronaut in the vacuum of space. They have their hooks into me and their umbilicals firmly attached. My "independence", when I observe any, is but a carefully-conjured illusion.
Thus, my frequent fantasy, as I sit at the office or in traffic; the one of blowing everything off and running away, is a misplaced one. I would soon perish. The squinting into the sun has started to hurt my head, so I turn to look back into the growing light that fills the living room and begins to enter more fully through the windows in the back. I ponder the irony of the poor quality of life known by the socially-dependent person, when solitude and dissociation are still his preferred modes. "You are kept alive to fulfill your role in this collective. Participate well, and live." Surely, I would be apprehended and restrained in an instant if I really decided to walk away from my support structure and my responsibilities. That is not an answer, and it never will be.
Indeed, consistency and predictability are life-qualities I tend to cherish, and the urban tedium of which I so often complain, if nothing else, offers the promise of such stringent environmental control. I would soon gyrate wildly and lose my centered, straight and narrow path of motion, if I unplugged all the compensating controls. I wonder, as I sit here drinking my coffee in the start of this new day, just how many of those destabilizing inherencies I bring with me to the Cabin. Even when I completely remove the external agents of irritation by leaving the overstimulation of overcrowded urban surroundings, my own thoughts are difficult to discipline. The greatest mastery a man can impose is indeed the mastery of himself.
I begin to think that it is the excess of these internal influences and propensities that make the external environment down there so difficult to accept. Peace, implemented from the inside outward, rather than running away with my tendencies toward annoyance intact, would make life more livable. But the social network, when it is concerned with my commercial exploitation, is loath to nurture such internal contentment, for it is only through discontent that I continue to require it as fully. There is no simple answer right at hand.
RB
26 August 1998 -- A walk upstream, against the current
The heat and stickiness today has finally started to be too much, so I begin a trip, down into the ravine, and up the river. Moss here has collected on so many of the rocks, and footing is something to think about. This is a problem inherent in hiking rough, stone-filled terrain: one does well to watch one's step, but then there's no attention left for the scenery. The abundance of summer's green is still with me, although the cooling of autumn is soon to be here.
I think of all the schools down there in the great centers of human mass, starting another Fall session, trotting out so many of those same old subjects, but before brand new eyes. That particular population has already said goodbye to summer, with their syllabi before them. They see outlined in precise detail the ordeals they shall know when November's cold is all about. But me? I'm here, today, walking my practiced step in backcountry sandals and nylon shorts.
It occurs to me that the students of which I just wrote were being born at the time I first went away to school! For a man who has had to embody one day at a time living for purposes of daily survival, I have sure let a lot of days go by nonetheless. I'm thinking of that Talking Heads "Stop Making Sense" cassette, the first thing I ever bought with a credit card in 1987, and its tune, Once in a Lifetime. I think I might have it with me, rattling around in the carrying compartment in the truck, but the only stereo here is the one I have to sit in the vehicle to listen to. Back in my real-life home, I have decent-enough audio equipment that I am too impatient to listen to or appreciate. Thus, it is no answer.
Oh, but it is nice down here by the rushing water right now, after the sweat I built up hanging around the front porch earlier! I see the various, minor cascades and eddy-pools, and stop here and there to look at the fish--but from above, where they are harder to appreciate. I don't pretend to know about trout and fly fishing, but I know it is a major sport, down where this river finally meets the town. Running water leads to civilization, yes, and I feel it almost trying to carry me back as well. But I hold my ground for the time being. It never seems much of a problem to get back to the old grind, where a man finds himself if he just lets himself drift.
I can hear the waterfall now, sheltered in the lush tree cover just ahead. I continue my way upward. Is this some form of misplaced conscientious objection or "civil disobedience"? It is, of course, the fashion these days to call one's self an "individual"; a non-conformist, but it is not always a very profitable life. It seems the bigger, implied emphasis is on fitting in to that predestined social niche and building one's "winner-take-all" jackpot from giving the people what they want like no one else can. So the "normal" person endures the standard pain of the rites of passage, some of them quite harrowing when one thinks of them later. Peer pressure, carrying them along. I never understood that. Do I have no "peers"?
Finally, I see the falls; that great pile of prominent rock over which the river just happens to flow. Its thundering continuity creates that fine, refreshing spray, and I find my spot right next to the churned-white rock cauldron through which the entire water-product from above must pass. A drop of rain falls, into this watershed somewhere towards the ridge top, and what does not evaporate on the ground must endure this point.
RB
30 August 1998 -- The steep path to a life of love
I've been sitting in the relative silence of the living room today, aware of how the sun would bear down on me if I did much outdoors. The airflow through the Cabin windows is essential to keeping any kind of cool during the summer daylight hours. Of course, this is not the heat of the old song "Summer in the City", which has "people looking half-dead / walking on the sidewalk, hotter than a match-head". There is a benefit to altitude. Still, this is a place where one walks about, everywhere, in a lightweight shirt and shorts, either barefoot or with sandals on the rougher, sharp-gravel areas. With the absence of any need for a clothing protocol, function is decidedly elevated above form.
I look about my basic, pine-panelled room and realize I'm feeling a small amount of withdrawal, at least from the information feeds of my real life, if not from the actual personal contacts. My conclusion has been that I need to live that life, so this should come as a consolation. But there's so much work to do on feeling as if I really belong among the "normal". I suppose I'm "self-conscious" and imagine that I am at once betrayed by an underdeveloped personality, the minute I attempt to belong to them. I picture the reaction of those others, as they accept me just to be nice but do not take me seriously. Acceptability-in-part may not be the best of deals in life, but the "count your blessings" types would look at me and say, "you have a lot to be thankful for". Then, they head off to their own dealings, with their fully-equipped personalities, brimming with common sense and common decency.
I sometimes wonder if I do them much good, hanging around. I must be reminding them of the last, small details they've been too busy to achieve. But they rightfully follow St. Paul's more excellent way, which is love. It is time to count as rubbish what I have that is not love. With my current priorities, that's a terribly low place to begin, and a decidedly humiliating posture to assume.
I look over to the cold hearth, and to the empty kitchen table, historically places of family togetherness, and wonder what love, at all, I practice in this place. Although I've heard "love your neighbor as yourself" frequently interpreted as a prescription, first and foremost, for self respect and dignity, it would not be enough to achieve these and then remain alone. Since I so often flee to this solitude out of contempt for my failings in the real world, and with a sense that I shall never cope fully with its pressures, I don't think I do much towards "loving myself" here, anyway.
I come, then, to the hard realization that it is my place to perform as the "normal" will let me, and not entertain bitterness or resentment because of my failings. If I must walk among them a broken man; a travesty of what I might claim to be, absorbing their rejections and scorn until my death, then I will have lived as I should have. I find myself pleading with God, "looking for a loophole" in this reality. "Surely, you can find me a place to be, among that society, where it isn't so hard, can't you? And I don't have to be there very often, do I?" But I see the stiff appearance of love's requirements as unflinching and non-negotiable. More to my dismay, however, I know that so long as I perceive it thus, I shall not have it. The truth; that I am not really received by society in that way, will indeed make me free. Knowing is one thing, feeling is quite another.
RB
